What is blank verse? Discuss Milton's handling of it in Book I of Paradise Lost.
Write a note on blank verse with special reference to Milton's use of it in Paradise Lost, Book I.
Blank verse means verse without rhyme, especially the iambic pentameter, or unrhymed heroic verse. This metre was introduced into England in the sixteenth century by the Earl of Surrey who translated two books of the Aeneid in that form. Modelled on classical metres, his verse was formless and unnatural but is important historically. Blank verse was then used in the early tragedies, for instance, in Gorboduc (written in 1561 by Norton and Sackville). It still suffered from a rough monotony and a tendency to make a unit of each line. Marlowet showed a great advance in the use of this metre: in his hands blank verse rhythms became freer. This development was shared by Elizabethan drama in general and can be traced in Shakespeare's plays-from the end-stopped (that is, the sense ending with the line) verses of Shakespeare's early plays to the over-flow lines of his later tragedies where the unit of rhythm is the phrase within the line. [Earl of Surrey: 1517-1547. † Marlowe: 1564-1593.]
In his preface to Paradise Lost, Milton tells us that the metre used by him is "English heroic verse without rime". The word "heroic" means the iambic line of five feet or ten syllables. Milton uses the adjective "English" because heroic verse in other languages probably means a line of a different length. In other words. Milton means to say that the rhythmical base of his poem is the unrhymed (blank) iambic pentameter. Such a line has ten syllables; it is divided into five feet, each of two syllables; and the second syllable of each foot is stressed: "And justify the ways of God to men".
Milton defended, in his preface, the use of blank verse against the growing popularity of the heroic couplet (which means English heroic verse, iambic pentameters, rhyming in pairs: aa bb cc and so on).
Milton's handling of blank verse in Paradise Lost, has generally received high praise. Book I fully reveals the characteristics of blank verse as used by Milton. The improvements effected by Milton in its use will be apparent to anyone who compares a passage from Gorboduc with passages selected at random from Book I of Paradise Lost. Milton's blank verse shows a lot of variety and freedom. The following features of Milton's blank verse, as compared with its use in Gorboduc may be pointed out:
1. The lines in Gorboduc are end-stopped. In other words, the rhetorical pause, dictated by the meaning, nearly always coincides with the end of the line. In this way the line tends to be the unit of meaning, as well as the unit of versification. This is not so in Paradise Lost where we generally have run-on lines of which the meaning flows into the succeeding lines. The following quotation from Book I shows the run-on movement rather than the pause on the line-ending:
Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace
And rest can never dwell, hope never comes
That comes to all; but torture without end
Still urges, and a fiery deluge, fed
With ever-burning sulphur unconsumed.
This feature, when a line runs on into the succeeding line, is called "enjambment". It has been calculated that the rate of enjambment in Paradise Lost as a whole is nearly sixty per cent, and that in some paragraphs it is as high as eighty per cent. The percentage in the later plays of Shakespeare is nearly forty-five.
When listening to early passages of blank verse, we become strongly aware of individual lines, and the way in which they seem to be units of meaning. In these passages, lines make a paragraph like sticks laid side by side. In Paradise Lost, on the other hand. we become aware more of paragraphs than of individual lines and, furthermore, the lines seem to be bent, shaped, and interwoven, to make a complex and satisfying paragraph-structure. This becomes clear if we look at the strong pauses, as indicated by full stops, semi-colons, exclamation marks, and question marks. In Gorboduc and in the Earl of Surrey's Aeneid, strong pauses tend to coincide with the line-endings, but in Paradise Lost strong pauses frequently occur within the line:
Whom reason hath equalled, force hath made supreme
Above his equals. Farewell, happy fields.
Where joy for ever dwells! Hail, horrors ! hail.
Infernal world! and thou, profoundest Hell.
Receive thy new possessor…………………
Here we have a full stop in the middle of the second line and exclamation marks in the third and fourth.
2. The rhythm, as marked by the distribution of stress, is much more regular in Gorboduc than in Paradise Lost. The lines in Gorboduc show a more regular succession of weak-strong accents (that is, of iambic feet). Also, the number of strong accents is more constant. Milton, on the other hand, varies the number of strong accents within his lines very freely. Almost half the lines in Book I, for example, have four accents instead of five, and quite a number have only three.
3. The lines in Gorboduc mostly have a natural pause within each line, even though this pause may not always be indicated by a comma. This pause or breathing-space, which is quite natural and corresponds with normal speech-habits, is called a caesura. The caesura tends to occur fairly regularly in the middle of the line. But Milton varies both the number and the position of these natural breaks within the line.
As compared with the regular iambic pentameters of Gorboduc. then. Milton's verse has the following three features: a high rate of enjambment. that is, of run-on lines; a variety in the number and position of the stresses: and a variety in the frequency and placing of the caesura. But these are examples of the irregularities of Milton's versification. It is necessary to note the regularities also. The following rules in respect of versification are applicable throughout Paradise Lost:
1. The line has ten syllables. (In a small proportion of lines, there are more than ten syllables. These exceptions fall into two categories. (a) Such a line as "Of rebel angels, by whose aid aspiring" (from Book I) has an extra syllable. Lines like this are, however, very infrequent, (b) In a line like "Till, as a signal giv'n, th' uplifted spear" (also from Book 1), two syllables are lost by the suppression of vowel sounds in the words giv'n and th. This suppression is called "elision" and Milton uses it quite frequently. In these cases the vowel-sound is not always completely dispelled and this results in a subtle extension to Milton's verse-scheme). ,
2. The final, that is, the tenth syllabic must always be stressed or be capable of being given a stress. In a very few cases, however, the normal pronunciation of a word leads to an unstressed final syllable. But, even in these cases, the final syllabic can, and probably should, be stressed.
3. One other stress must fall, in any one line, on either the fourth or the sixth syllabic. If there is not a stress on the fourth syllabic, there will definitely be one on the sixth. But this does not prevent Milton from stressing both the fourth and the sixth syllables whenever he wants to.
The basic regularities in Paradise Lost, then, are the number of syllables per line; the stress on the fourth or sixth syllabic; and the stress on the final syllable. Dr. Johnson was of the opinion that every line in English heroic verse should be heard as a "distinct system of sounds" (and this distinctness, according to him, was obtained and preserved by the device of rhyme). The features of the verse of Paradise Lost (the run-on lines, and the irregularity of stress and pause), work against this view. They tend to diminish the distinction of individual lines, and to subdue them to a larger whole. Against this, however, the fact that the final syllable in every line is stressed must tend to preserve the separate identity of each line, even where the sense or meaning is "variously drawn out from one verse into another."* This is what we should expect from so invariable a recurrence at the line- ending; and this is what seems in practice to happen.
Milton's various irregularities have two related purposes: first, to avoid the monotony which occurs if too many elements of sound are repeated regularly through a long stretch of lines, and second, to leave the way free for more subtle sound-effects, and to build up verse-paragraphs. In fact, it has been said that Milton's peculiar power resides in his handling of long verse-paragraphs which are as famous as those of Edward Gibbon in prose.† We do not have to read far into Paradise Lost to find examples of Milton's mastery of the verse-paragraph. The very first twenty-six lines of Book I provide an excellent example. This first paragraph of the poem is composed of two periods, the first of which runs for sixteen lines. Milton's contemporaries must have read these lines with surprise. The lines do not rhyme; they show no concern for regular alternation of accents; the enjambment is uncompromising; the caesuras are heavy and irregularly placed (after "disobedience", "tree", "world", "Eden", "us", and "Muse") There are no conventional signs here to give the poetry reader his bearings: the lines have the ring, the movement, the freedom, of impassioned speech. Milton employs freedom but he also shows great skill.
Although Milton, in his preface to Paradise Lost, attacks rhyme as "the invention of a barbarous age", it does not mean that he never uses rhyme. In fact, he uses rhyme as one of the many devices to ensure that his blank verse is verse to the ear as well as the eye. There are as many as seventeen actual rhyming couplets in Paradise Lost. Rhymes separated by a single line occur more frequently. Here is an example from Book I:
If once they hear that voice, their liveliest pledge
Of hope in fears and dangers, heard so oft
In worst extremes and on the perilous edge
(Lines 274-276)
There are many examples of rhyme of which at least one element occurs at the caesura, or natural pause within the line. Here is one instance:
Moors by his side under the lee, while night
Invests the sea, and wished morn delays. (Lines 207-208)
(Here the word "lee" rhymes with the word "sea").
[These words are quoted from Milton's own Preface to Paradise Lost.
+ Even T.S. Eliot, who was on the whole hostile to Milton cited his verse- paragraphs as the most convincing evidence of Milton's greatness. Eliot said: "The peculiar feeling, almost a physical sensation of a breathless leap, communicated by Milton's long periods, and his alone, is impossible to procure from rhymed verse."]